The encyclopedia · Engineering & Operations · Technical decision · 2021-2025
BYD recalled 89,000 Qin Plus hybrids after regulators found a battery flaw
A regulator investigation, not BYD's own detection, forced the recall of 88,981 Qin Plus DM-i cars whose battery packs could lose power output mid-drive.
BYD Auto · 2025-11-27
What happened
Between January 2021 and September 2023, BYD built 88,981 Qin Plus DM-i plug-in hybrids across two production batches with a manufacturing inconsistency in the power battery pack — the individual cells inside varied too much in voltage, internal resistance and capacity, the tight consistency a pack needs to report its true state accurately.
When a battery management system reads cells that inconsistent as an anomaly, it protects itself by limiting output power. In practice, a car could lose power suddenly during a highway overtake or a hill climb, and in extreme cases the vehicle couldn't run in pure-electric mode at all.
China's State Administration for Market Regulation registered the recall with an "I" suffix — marking it as investigation-driven, opened after the regulator began looking into the defect, rather than one BYD reported on its own. The recall went out in two batches on November 27, 2025: 52,890 cars built between September 2021 and September 2023, and 36,091 built between January 2021 and September 2022. BYD's remedy was an over-the-air software update to detect the anomaly, with a free battery pack replacement at dealerships for any car it flagged.
Why it happened
- BYD's production line didn't hold power-battery cells to a tight enough consistency tolerance across roughly two years of Qin Plus DM-i output, and nothing caught it before nearly 89,000 cars shipped.
- The recall carries the regulator's own case-number suffix marking it investigation-driven — a regulatory probe surfaced the defect before BYD's own monitoring did.
The lesson
A recall that carries the regulator's case number, not the company's own, means the manufacturer's quality system didn't catch the defect — the investigation did.
Aftermath
BYD pushed an OTA update to detect the faulty packs and offered free replacements through its Dynasty-network dealerships; no crashes or injuries were confirmed. The recall came five weeks after BYD's separate, larger recall of more than 115,000 vehicles in October 2025 for design and battery issues, adding to a run of quality scrutiny on China's best-selling automaker.
Sources
- 国家市场监督管理总局缺陷产品召回技术中心 — 比亚迪汽车工业有限公司、比亚迪汽车有限公司召回部分秦PLUS DM-i汽车（二）
- Sina Finance — 比亚迪召回近8.9万辆秦PLUS DM-i汽车
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